1. The Story Behind the
Story
The Effect of Self-Referential News Coverage on
Perceptions of Credibility and Trust in
Government

2. CENTRAL QUESTIONS
1)Does consuming media criticism affect
perceptions of the government and/or the
press?
2)Is this effect different for traditional
media criticism and comedic media
criticism?

3. MEDIA CRITICISM
• Novel feature of news coverage
• Grew with rise of cable news, web
• Driven by organizational competition
• Overwhelmingly negative

4. Why would this affect perceptions of
the press?
Incivility Process
• Media criticism is • Media criticism focuses
virulent and hostile on how the news is made
• Such content tends to • Perceptions of process
decrease affect toward its tend to decrease trust in
target and source institutions

5. Why would this affect perceptions of
the government?
• Public perceives media and government as related
institutions (Mediatization, New Institutionalism)
• Institutional competition may result in spillover effect
• Unclear if this negative portrayal of press will make
government look better or worse

6. THREE GROUPS
Serious Control Comedic
Exposed to traditional Exposed to straight Exposed to media-
media self-criticism reporting on same focused content from
(David Carr, Howard events covered in media late-night comedy
Kurtz, etc.) criticism programs & satire sites

7. Change in perceptions by group
Serious Control Comedic
Media
credibility - - -
Media trust - - (ns)
-
Trust in
leaders
+ (ns) - (ns)
+
Trust in - (ns) None + (ns)
government

8. Overall Results
Perceptions of government
Exposure to media criticism resulted in
greater trust in political leaders
No change in trust in government
Perceptions of the press
No change
Comedic v. serious media criticism
No significant differences

9. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
Press self-criticism benefits government
Negative media criticism prompts positive
comparison to government
Press tearing itself down results in more trust
placed in political leaders
Attention matters
Greater change in attitudes for those who
report paying little attention to politics

10. Method
Design: Experiment, pretest/posttest
Participants: 135 undergraduates
Procedure: Two exposures, one week apart, self-
administered w/exposure check
Apparatus: Real, unaltered stories taken from
recent media coverage

11. Perceptions measured
Perceptions of the press
Credibility of press as institution
Trust in press as institution
Perceptions of government
Trust in political leaders
Trust in government

12. Table 1: Pre- and post-test scores and mean change, by group
Within-group Between-group
Pre-test Post-test difference difference1
Media credibility -0.01
Serious 3.13 2.99 -0.14*
Comedic 3.16 2.93 -0.24**
Control 3.12 2.95 -0.18**
Media trust -0.09
Serious 3.11 2.98 -0.13a
Comedic 3.21 2.99 -0.22**
Control 3.11 3.01 -0.10
Trust in political leaders 0.19*
Serious 2.57 2.68 0.11
Comedic 2.45 2.61 0.15*
Control 2.65 2.59 -0.06
Trust in government -0.01
Serious 2.80 2.69 -0.11
Comedic 2.53 2.63 0.10
Control 2.48 2.48 0.00
* Difference is significant at the p < .05 level using a one-tailed ANOVA test.
** Difference is significant at the p < .01 level using a one-tailed ANOVA test.
a
Difference is significant at the p < .10 level using a one-tailed ANOVA test.
All indicators are the mean of multiple measures assessed on a scale of 1 to 5.
1
Between-group difference represents the result of subtracting the mean difference between the
pre-test and post-test scores for the control group from those of participants receiving the
treatment.

13. Table 2: Mean change by level of attention to public affairs
Low attention High attention
Media credibility
Serious -0.31 -0.01
Comedic -0.35 -0.12
Control -0.22 -0.14
Media trust
Serious -0.26 -0.04
Comedic -0.42 -0.03
Control -0.13 -0.09
Trust in political leaders
Serious 0.21 0.04
Comedic 0.16 0.15
Control -0.05 -0.06
Trust in government
Serious -0.03 -0.18
Comedic 0.00 0.20
Control 0.14 -0.18

14. Michael Barthel
Department of Communication
University of Washington
mbarthel@uw.edu
Ariel Hasell
Department of Communication
University of California Santa Barbara
ariel@umail.ucsb.edu